Time is up. 5 players participated (seems like even with the freer engine choice participation is waning), and these are the results!

Player	Engine	Number skills/saved
Crane	NeoLemmix	12 skills, 49 saved
Simon/Forestidia	Lix	14 skills, 47 saved
Minim	Lix	15 skills, 48 saved
Ramon	Lix	21 skills, 49 saved
SQron188	NeoLemmix	25 skills, 52 saved
SQron188	Lix	26 skills, 53 saved

Congratulations to Crane, our winner! In his submission PM he counted 13 skills, but checking the replay it turns out even one fewer skills was used!
For comparison, I tried to reproduce his solution in Lix. Due to more lenient steel detection in NeoLemmix, one extra skill has to be used in Lix to make
the solution work, and instead of double miner cancelling a miner is turned with a blocker, which should result in one fewer lix saved. But maybe due to
some timing difference the Lix solution I got saves 2 more, so 51 lix (and uses 13 skills).

See attached for everyone's solutions, as well as the Lix version of Crane's solution.

Crane now has the chance to host the next contest, or pass on the privilege to Simon and Forestidia.

Just a quick reminder: you have until Sunday Feb 17th, 6:00 am UTC, so less than a week left!

Just a quick update, due to some physics differences (namely, in Lix miners/diggers can be assigned on steel while not so in NeoLemmix), I made a second version of the NeoLemmix level where the in the prime spot for exploiting this in Lix there are steel bumps now so something similar can be done in NeoLemmix. You can submit solutions to either of the NeoLemmix versions, and existing submissions remain valid. For the new version, see attachments of the first post.

(This is also a reminder to submit solutions )

I'm against allowing users to delete their own topics, unless it's possible for admins to recover them if they want to.
Otherwise it's basically a form of data loss, which can be anything from negligible to severe, just imagine a high-profile user
from the past deciding they want to erase their tracks. Nothing you could do once it's too late, so I don't agree with the wait-and-see policy.

If someone really feels so strongly about getting rid of their topic they can just ask a mod.

Welcome to the 3rd installment of this contest!

This is a bit of an experiment, but I created the same level in both Lix and NeoLemmix. I understand that there are physics differences and that some solutions that might work in one engine might not work in the other, but I hope most solutions will work the same and that many minor differences can be worked around, making it a fair game. At least I don't think there are any systemic biases giving one engine a clear advantage.
That said, if people are unhappy with this, I will restrict the contest to a single engine (based on popular opinion).

EDIT: I added a second version of the NeoLemmix level. The only difference is two little steel bumps on the top steel platforms. This is to account for the difference that you cannot assign miners/diggers on steel in NeoLemmix, while in Lix you can. You can submit solutions to either of the two NeoLemmix levels.

Goal: Try to solve the level using as few skills as possible. Tiebreaker: Higher number of lemmings/lix saved.
(Note that this is different from the previous 2 contests, the main criterion and the tiebreaker have been swapped!)

Submission deadline for solutions: Sunday Feb 17th, 6:00 am UTC
You can submit solutions for one or both engines. Submit to me via PM. When you submit, submit a replay, as well write down the number of skills used and number of lemmings/lix saved.

At the end, I will post a complete ranking list (determining the next contest host) as well as engine-specific ranking lists in case some solutions from one engine end up not working in the other.

PS: I made the NeoLemmix version in a text editor, because the NLEditor in Wine doesn't display any objects or tiles, and placing invisible tiles is kinda useless. That's why it's lacking any decoration.

Submissions so far:
Minim
SQRon
Simon/Forestidia
Crane
Ramon

Results in this post further down the thread.

Thanks, that was a nice level! Slightly fewer things to try out than in the previous one, but still a lot of variability in the end.

Here are two variations for the start that use 15 skills.
In fact, Simon and Forestidia's solution can also go down to 15 skills with a little change, if you have the second digger not fall down, but platform 4 times after digging a little.
So I'm somewhat surprised I ended up being the only one to do it with 15 skills.

I'm happy to host the next round in a little while.
Not sure if the reason for fewer participants this time was NeoLemmix vs Lix, the novelty wearing off, or just the lack of a holiday break, but considering I've never used the NeoLemmix editor chances are I'll make a another Lix level. (I also thought of using existing levels, but also there my knowledge of NeoLemmix levels is currently pretty limited.)

Thanks for hosting the contest! This was a really interesting level with a lot of possible approaches.
A lot of variety in the solutions that people submitted, too. The right half seemed to be pretty much the
same for everyone (with two variations to rescue the top hatch both taking up the same amount of skills),
but the left half really was very open-ended.

Somehow I discarded the idea of going below as well as my mind is not conditioned to basher staircases anymore
after they were culled from Lix long ago. I was also surprised of the hang gliders clipping through terrain and
landing in the little nook when digging at the right side of the girder above the exit, especially in consideration
of the strangely sensitive foot check for builders.


One musing for the next contest: It could be interesting to score by minimum skills first, with maximum saved
only as the tiebreaker (and maybe discard time as second tiebreaker to save people tedious micro-optimizing).
I think this might make things more open-ended as it's not a priori clear what's the least amount of skills possible
(while it's often easy to determine the maximum amount of lemmings that can be saved), and even once you've
settled for a number of skills, it's probably still less clear what's the total number of lemmings that can be saved
with that amount of skills.